Forecast oil—low the Internet & WWW Might Be Used in the
Future
There are many ways that the Internet could be used in the next 3 to 5 years. The main aspect that they all have in common Is the increased use of interactivity on the Internet. This means that the Internet will shift from being a one-way distribution of information to a two-way information stream. Sdentists will continue to lead the way in this area by watching the results from scientific experiments and exchanging ideas through live audio and video feeds. Due to budget cuts, this collaboration should be expected to increase even more to stretch what budget they do have. (For more information on this, check out Business Week artide on sdence and technology “Welcome To The World Wide Lab” 10/30/95.)

1.	Interactive Computer Games

One of the first areas where interactivity will increase on the Internet are computer games. People will no longer have to take turns playing solitary or crowd around one machine. Instead they will join a computer network game and compete against players located at distant sites. An example of this is Starwave’s Fantasy Sports Game. This game is still a more traditional approach of updating statistics on the computer and players looking at their status. A more active game Is Marathon Man, which portrays players on the screen reacting to various situations. In the future, many of these games will also include ~

2.	Real Estate

Buying a home online will become possible. While very few people would want to buy a home without seeing it in person, having house listings online will help reduce the time it takes to purchase a home. People can narrow down which houses that they are actually
interested in viewing by seeing their description and picture online. An example is this ll~t of house desciiptions by region of the country. This will be improved when database search capabilities are added. People can select the features that they are interested in and then search the database. In response, they will receive a list of houses that meet their criteria.
Also, having several different images of the House as well as a short video dip of a walk through of the house, will help buyers make their selection quicker. This area is growing quickly. For example, the following sites of interest to the West Coast were added online since the writing of this paper: Windermere Real Estate. fr~ct~i~, and Li~tingIjnl~.

3. Process Mortgages online

After a house is chosen, potential buyers can apply for a mortgage online. No longer will buyers be restricted to local lending institutions, since many lenders will be able to compete online for business. Visit an example of an online mortoaae comDutation. In the future, each lender will have a Web page which will process the mortgage application. One of the main reasons this has not been implemented is security, which is discussed further under the strateciic risks and security section.

4. Buying stocks

Stocks will soon be able to be purchased over the Internet without the assistance of a broker. Charles Schwab has a prototype that is being tested currently in Florida. Once the security issues are ironed out, this application will also be active.

5. Ordering products.

Ordering products online is an important application. As mentioned above, the Pizza Page showed how easy it could be done. Other companies are setting up Web pages to actually do this. An example Is ]2~L~. Customers can actually order online if they choose to do so. They can even send their credit card number over the network. Since this is non-secure, most people probably still call the company to order any Item.

6.	Live Video

Viewing live video dips will become more common in the future. ~4N has files of video dips of news stories at video vault which can be downloaded and viewed on a home computer.
Seeing actual live video feed Is dependent on network speed, and most home users do not have fast enough connections to make this a practical application yet. This is discussed In more detail under the section strategIc risk and speed of network access. Once the speed of network connection increases, more people will be interested in live video dips.

7. “Chat” Internet Telephone

While AOL users are currently accessing “Chat Rooms” to communicate with other people on the Internet, they are restricted to text-based communication or possibly an icon as their identity online. CUCME from Carneige Mellon provides a means for people to actually see other people online. However, network speed is once again a limiting factor. If a user is not directly connected to the Internet (most connections are via modem), then the image is extremely slow. This application will become more popular with increased network connections.

8. Video Conferencing

On the other hand, businesses will begin using video to communicate with others. Andersen Consulting is setting up training online. There should also be some applications that businesses can choose to help set up video conferendng. IBM bought LOTUS Notes for this reason last summer. IBM needs to make it a more flexible solution by interacting LOTUS Notes with the Internet. They currently are in the process of doing this. Netscape also offers a solution based on the software company Collabora that they purchased last fall. These possible solutions should encourage businesses to use video conferendng and online training. Additional information on Video Conferendna is also available.